RALEIGH, N.C. -- North Carolina has a new law designed to crack down on companies that dont have workers compensation coverage.

Lawmakers adopted the measure in response to public criticism over lax efforts to enforce the state workers compensation law thats supposed to assure injured workers receive proper medical care and lost wages.

Under the law, information submitted by insurers on employers coverage status, collected by the North Carolina Rate Bureau, must be shared with the state Industrial Commission, which is charged with assuring employers have coverage and adjudicating workers compensation claims.

Impetus for the legislation came from newspaper investigations of lousy state enforcement efforts.

The Raleigh-based News & Observer, for example, ran a series of articles in May documenting how thousands of employers skipped coverage, leaving injured workers to fend for themselves.

The investigation found that although employers are required to inform the Industrial Commission when they purchase, renew or cancel a policy, the commission rarely accessed the information from the Rate Bureau until a claim is filed.

In many cases where the employer was found to not have coverage, the investigation found the Industrial Commission rarely penalized the employer.

By requiring the commission to capture all the information from the Rate Bureau, lawmakers sought to improve the flow of employer data so the commission could enforce the law before a worker files a claim.

The measure was passed and signed by the governor despite opposition from media groups that objected to the fact the employer information will not be a public record.

By allowing the Rate Bureau to claim the employer data is proprietary, the media groups say it will block the transparency needed to inform the public about the workings of the workers compensation system.

Workers in North Carolina can go to the Industrial Commission website and check on their employers insurance status.